Last year I didn’t think I’d ever buy a house and then it happened. Now I grow cherry tomatoes and have an adopted 15 year old parrotlet named Satan. I live with my partner and have been slowly getting back into volunteer work (website updates for 350 Sacramento and some local neighborhood tree stuff). It entertains me to post mildly controversial (but basic humanity) things like supporting the idea that a homeless shelter should go in the soon-to-be-empty lot across the street. It is entertaining because it’s an easy way to out Trump supporters in the neighborhood or people who weirdly have no concern for their fellow human beings. Is this my new art practice?

Wow, the studio open tour was a whirlwind and certainly a blast! It kicked Trina and I into high gear and it was well worth the fruits of our 2-3 months of intense labor. The media below doesn’t quite capture the experience, but ICYMI, I think these will give you a good idea of the second successful collaboration between me and Trina. Let’s call it high concept no brow art that’s meant for museums more than living rooms (and apparently haunted houses??? #killinit).

Here’s a video of the art show Trina and I put on! The VHS videos playing don’t show up well because of the tracking on the “dead media,” as coined by Trina. Um, and yeah I did make this video for my aunt and my mum lol originally I thought my mum wasn’t going to make it and then she did #anxiety

Trina’s going to take additional photos later this week of some of our newer works.

Thankful for getting pulled into this opportunity to make art with my bff/partner/#homegirl Trina in the Verge Center for the Arts’ Studio Open Tours in Sacramento.

Here’s descriptions Trina/I wrote:

THE AZN ROOM SEPTEMBER 15-16, 2018

A song came out in the early 2000’s, a take on the 2pac song, “Changes”, called “Got Rice” or often referred to as the “AZN Pride” song. The lyrics beg the question: Got rice, bitch? Got rice? Got food, got soup, got spice?

Hungry to cling to an identity in our teenage years, a lot of 1st and 2nd generation Asian Americans held this song in high regard as our representation of our youth. We can all agree the song is very problematic, and upon revisiting it at a much later age, it reminds us not only of our formative years, but of a culture and experience we Asian Americans all share.

As adults, away from our families and places of comfort, the white workspaces and communities offer isolation in the form of “I practically grew up [insert Asian community]” and “I’ve had [insert ethnic food] once”. With a cringed and baffled smile, we navigate through adulthood, attempting any strategy to rail against the stereotypes the AZN Pride song had to offer. And in secret, amongst each other, at dinner and on karaoke nights, in the markets of Asia Town USA, and every time we ask our white friends to take their shoes off, we admit to ourselves the song also sings about the things that make us and our households special.

How do we connect to a community we feel so far away from? What brings us comfort and how do we unwind after a long hard day of “hey, do you think this is racist?”

Every day we relinquish a part of ourselves to fit in to this country, and this is the place where our Asian American identities lie. Not quite Asian, not quite American, but a melding confusion of guilt, shame, and pride. Guilt for not knowing where we come from, shame of where we come from, pride for what we came from.

This is not yours, this is ours.Got rice, bitch? Got rice?Anything you can show that is nice?Got cash, got moves, got thoughts like us?Fuck no, hell you white, you’ll never be like us.

Trina Fernandez, 2018, To Mom, LoveeMixed Media

The Japanese may have created the art of Karaoke, but it’s Filipinos that are the true purveyors of the sport. The popular activity is prevalent in Filipino households via portable Karaoke machines, in bars and eateries, and now widely available on YouTube. Not unlike movies, Karaoke offers us the words that we’ve failed to say, and the ability to be who we want for four minutes and sixteen seconds -a form of entertainment to relieve stress and the permission we need to dream.

My relationship with my family is amicable, we don’t know much about each other, maybe not because we choose to, but because we won’t allow ourselves to be close. My mother, the one I identify with most, from a young age has always shared her interest in popular music and movies. At 17, a former cheerleader, ¼ Spanish-⅛ Chinese, someone Leif Garrett once described as “Groovy”, got pregnant by a farm boy, and traded whatever future she had to move from the Philippines to the United States with her daughter and husbands family.

That is as much about my mother as she’ll ever let me know. Through the music and movies she forced me to watch and listen to these items she identified with, and years later, I am only now trying to piece these feelings together in efforts to understand her before she’s gone.

Before you walk uncomfortably through a hundred lanterns dedicated to God Girl, learn more about this azn God… Girl.

Cat Hellxia, 2018, Path to PraiseMixed Media

She is all-knowing, all-powerful, and pretty apathetic about her own agency. Her Other like a brother, Skeleton Space Man, is a trickster goofball. And their plaything is Sleep Walker – he passed away in comatose and exists to serve God Girl and Skeleton Space Man by possessing and interfering with mortal lives.

You may be asking, “What does it all mean?” Just have faith and meaning will come to you, probably. Or you can just make it up, whatever. But whatever your conclusions, be sure to take your beliefs too seriously, practice devotion to your fear of the unknown, and thank God Girl for any achievements in your life. God Girl deserves all praise. We would be nothing without Her. Thank GOD GIRL. A man!

CRAFT STATION by Hellxia: Religious Altaration

Now that you have been touched by the spirit and disembodied body of God Girl, you may offer her your prayers in whatever form you please. We have included here some tiles, Sharpie markers, rubbing alcohol, sponges, Q-Tips, and dust blasters for you to experiment with. Offer God Girl your creativity or embarrassing lack thereof. No one is judging you but God Girl. In the end, God Girl is always watching, is always knowing, and is always waiting.

If you have any dumb questions, Reverend Cat Hellxia is available to hear out your concerns and preach at you.

Asians in our room free to do what we want, judgement free zone, MOM AND DAD.

Trina Fernandez, 2018, ManananggalMixed Media

The manananggal (from the word tanggal, meaning to remove or separate) is a creature from Filipino folklore often depicted as a severed torso of a vampire like woman. In the evening she sprouts giant wings and separates herself from her lower half, and while dragging her intestines through the sky, she hunts for men and pregnant women, hungry for the hearts of unborn children.

This manananggal, is a literal separation between my Filipino and American identity. Never feeling like I belonged to either, and finding it impossible to be both, she represents the push and pull of where my family came from and who I want to be.

All Filipinos are connected through blood and faith, and this manananggal is both our complicated past and an unknown future.

Trina Fernandez, 2018, Back HomeMixed Media

Thousands of overseas Filipinos send balikbayan boxes (literal translation being “repatriate box”) to their family in the Philippines every year. Filled to the brim with everyday items like….Kleenex, Lipton Tea, Oreos, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Band-Aids, etc… everyday things to show our family back home that we care and miss them, and to show our desire to one day spend our lives together again.

“Have you been back home?” is a question I’m asked frequently, I think, because to a lot of Filipinos don’t consider America home. How can I share my life with a place I know nothing about? A place seen as poverty stricken and relaxed, third world and beautiful, dangerous and familial. To answer the question, no I’ve never been “back home”, but there is a constant lump in my throat filled with the words I wish to speak in a language I barely know, a longing for the flavors I can’t seem to cultivate, and a want for the loving embrace of faces like mine welcoming home. So where are these feelings kept, but in these boxes waiting in between the every day.

Look, it’s us!

Trina and I made it into the Verge’s e-blast! #GrabTheGuide and come see us on September 15 and 16!

I’ve got two weekends left to prepare for the Verge Center for the Arts’ Studio Art Tour. I got a God Girl altar project with lanterns and tiles, and also that project about idealizing the relationship among my parents and I.

The latter project – not so hot. I’ve got like 2 pieces done lol Luckily, we’ll also be showing some larger scale older work. If y’all remember Generalizasian, get ready for a blast from the past.

Of the former project, I have completed 67 lanterns – just 3 more to go. The lanterns are covered in images of the holy trio – God Girl, Skeleton Space Man, and Sleep Walker – along with epic biblical messages, noodles (obviously), the burning pizza, and space to think about it all. You’ll have to bump into the lanterns in order to get to your destination: the altar to God Girl, where you can say a prayer and make a “donation” to the church of God Girl.

Who is God Girl?

She is Skeleton Space Man and Skeleton Space Man is her. Skeleton Space Man (SSM) is a trickster, a deviant, a hooligan, a fun and dangerous fellow. What can’t he do? What won’t he do? Not many know about SSM’s tricks or his relation to God Girl.

And then there’s Sleep Walker. A poor lost soul, some kid who passed away in comatose. His parents were devout believers in the aZn faith. They tried to steer their son to the righteous path, but one day he just collapsed, and later passed. They were devastated, of course. Why would God Girl do this to them? What had they done wrong? Had their son brought this upon himself and thus them? Is She such a vengeful God? But surely God Girl took him for a reason. Have faith. Trust in God Girl. Believe that She took Our Son away for the Greater Good™. He is in a better place now, Our Son in aZn Heaven.

Sleep Walker’s parents may be glorified or horrified to know that their son died so he could join God Girl and SSM in aZn Heaven. God Girl saw that Sleep Walker wasn’t a believer, and she was like whatever about it. But SSM saw God Girl seeing that Sleep Walker wasn’t a believer, so he did something about it. He took his own Righteous Path™ and brought Sleep Walker to their heavenly realm so he would believe.

When Sleep Walker arrived, he was like the opposite of like whatever about it. Why was he there? Why was he not here anymore? What was his purpose now? Who had the right to do this to him?

But Sleep Walker was where he was, where he will always be, and where he always has been (time and existence work differently in aZn Heaven). Now he was part of the family, whether he believed it or not. His Purpose™ now was to serve God Girl and SSM as a bridge to the mortal realm. Before, God Girl and SSM could only really watch and tinker around occasionally if they really wanted to. But now it was so much easier for SSMboth of them to actively participate and alter the world they watched. Like, if they liked plain old television before, this was really HD, even 3D or VR sort of stuff! What a time to be God!

Sleep Walker’s unique situation allowed him to possess mortals, making them act a certain way, guiding them forcefully and unbeknownst to them towards different decisions. What fun!

What does it all mean?

My God Girl series started as a naturally point on the path from Generalizasian (angry about stereotypes) and Frustrasian (depressed about stereotypes) to being proud of who I am at whatever point in time, to taking hold of my own agency, to live my life without needing to make everything about race and gender (ya but you’re right, it’s still totally about those and more). God Girl also developed as a response to growing up Christian, then having a WTF moment (I’m agnostic), but still having a super devout parent.

Granted, I have friends who are Christian and it doesn’t bother me (I mean, I still have to read more than a children’s Bible, but objectively so far to me the stories are actually just bad – like, Moses had to convince God not to kill everyone, and then He killed everyone and wouldn’t let Moses into the promised land???). But when you have a relationship with someone who feels the need to shove Christianity in your face all the time, it’s just kind of awkward. And I want other people to feel that way, too lol though I know lots of you already feel me the way people in your life wish you felt the spirit of Christ amiiiiriiiite?

tl;dr – God Girl is just a way for me to work through my relationship with my mum and her relationship with God.

Creating art is a weird thing for me. Originally I was going to go to college for art, but changed my major last minute to Business/Accounting. Three years into college, I changed back to art. After college, I wasn’t sure what to do with my degree… Do I go to grad school? Do I become a professor? Do I want to illustrate children’s books? Do I want to be a professional freelance illustrator? Do I want to be a graphic designer? Do I want to keep doing pro bono graphic design without any experience? Do I want to sell art? Do I want to make money off of my own art? What is art to me?

After several years (6 to be precise), I’ve realized a few things:

I don’t like making art for other people. Art is therapy for me. It helps me process.

I am not good at keeping deadlines for my art, aka I am not good at making art for other people.

I am totally enthused if people want to buy art I have already created. Many things contribute to my happiness and money is the gateway to a lot of those things.

Basically, I will never make money off of my art, and I am okay with that. I am good at other things that I can do for day jobs (and I still very much enjoy doing IT help desk work!).

And now more than ever I am creating art in leaps and bounds! I think this is because I finally have a job that doesn’t stress me out (and as an introvert, working remotely means that I am fully charged at the end of a work day!), I make enough money to live comfortably (for now #rent #…mortgage???), and I’m eating better and exercising regularly. In general, I have cut a lot of stressors out of my life (privileged enough to do so) and it feels great.

Now I am stressed, but in a positive way, because I’ve got 50+ lanterns and a bunch of other pieces to finish before the Verge Studio Art Tour on September 8-9!!! The piece I’m most excited to show is an altar to God Girl, but you have to get kind of pummeled by 70+ lanterns with a variety of images and messages on them to get to it (and to get out). I pray to GOD GIRL that I’ll see you there!

p.s. I’m still working on being good about updating my website with actual new images lol

I have a Honda Fit. It’s an awesome TARDIS-like car. The downsides so far are 1) Honda went a little cheap with the plastic parts and 2) my tire pressure indicator is hyper sensitive.

If your tire pressure indicator keeps coming on and you suspect the PSI difference is negligible, you can actually reset the tire indicator by closing your car doors and then pressing the tire indicator button just to the bottom left of the steering wheel. If it keeps coming on, you should probably get your tires checked. #TheMoreYouKnow

It was a noon on a Friday and the brain fog had long ago settled in. I didn’t have any food in my fridge, so I thought, “Why not treat yourself to a Postmates lunch today?” Maybe something healthy like a Pronto’s farmers market salad, one of my favorite meals (and I’m not usually keen on salads). But what about my ex-lover, the Asian Chicken Wrap from Togo’s?

There was a Togo’s on my college campus that I used to Go To all the time for that Asian Chicken Wrap (*ahem* I remember it being called an Asian Chicken Salad Wrap). It’s like a cold, stiff burrito I can kid myself into thinking is healthy if I ignore all the Asian salad dressing leaking out of the bottom end (to be fair, it is comparably healthy). I remember the refreshing almost-zero-nutritional-value iceberg lettuce paired with fried wonton sticks, expertly wrapped in a spinach tortilla and cut in half just enough to satisfyingly rip it apart after unwrapping the gift of a healthier-alternative fast food corporation. A side note of this memory is that one of my residents (I was a Resident Advisor, aka RA) worked there, so it was fun to see her every now and then (our joke was yelling, “STOP FOLLOWING ME” every time we saw each other anywhere… I’m not sure why, but you can trust me when I assure you it was funny).

So yes, I did spend $10 on a Togo’s wrap with the standard Postmates fees. And yes, it was just as good as I remember it, though it was a little less expertly wrapped, a little poorly cut in half so I had a hard time ripping it apart evenly, and I did almost eat a piece of the wrapper. And yes, it did give me the poops for the rest of the day. Three additional poops in addition to the regular poop, and a mild tummy ache on the side. That didn’t stop me from eating mildly undercooked pork from an overly packaging-wasteful cook-it-your-damn-self company and a CREAM brownie ice cream sandwich later on. The Asian Chicken Wrap is still one of my favorite meals. I knew what I was signing up for, and I paid the price. Would I do it again? Yes. Even with those spicy poops? Yup.

A few weeks ago, Trina and I perused Home Depot and some thrift stores for materials, which gave me a lot of inspiration. I’m still stumbling around trying to balance work, life, friends, and art, but you know, it’s going much better than before. Now that I work remotely, I actually crave human interaction – who knew that being around people 8 hours a day was THAT tiring (I knew). I have more time to be creative (but also more time to be lazy).

I also got an idea to do a new series of idealized portraits of what life could have been. So like, maybe I became a doctor and my parents were really happy about that, or maybe I got married and had a kid and my parents were really happy about that, or maybe I got enough sleep that one time and didn’t crash my car, or maybe I didn’t get wasted at high school graduation and vomit on everything. lol The possibilities are endless! We move through life asking, “What am I doing here?” then we come to a point years later to ask ourselves, “How did I get here?” finally landing at death’s door, which is exactly that – a doorway to something else beyond (I just saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in a theater and it was A+).

I definitely didn’t meet my goal, but I produced 15 more drawings than I would have normally done so, so I feel pretty good about that. An assignment with a deadline is definitely necessary for me to get my ass off the floor (here’s an image of me scooting my ass on the floor _______&). I guess I also can’t expect to meet a deadline, but to be fair, that was a pretty ambitious assignment having been out of school for 6 years now (not counting community college courses). Having deadlines made me check-in more frequently with myself, my drawings, and my calendar, which I found useful and productive rather than wandering aimlessly through the ether of living life at a minimum level of productivity (not that wandering aimlessly isn’t okay every now and then).

What was also helpful was creating a sheet of thumbnails sketches to brainstorm ideas for larger pieces. I like tiny thumbnails because I don’t get the anxiety that comes with committing to larger blank canvases. With the 15 drawings I have now, I’m hoping to choose a few to re-create and refine on a larger scale. I should probably add that to my timeline or else I might not get that done lol

ON THE JOB FRONT: I’ve been really happy so far about my new job as an IT Help Desk Jr. Analyst. I get anxious because the learning curve is pretty steep, but it’s very exciting and everyone’s real kind. And as I’ve said like a broken record to my partner, I love working from home. I miss my standing desk, but it is pretty much exactly as I always dreamed it would be.

Core perks of working from home:

Don’t have to smell anyone else’s poops

Don’t have to worry about whose pubes are on the toilet seat

No constantly draining face-to-face interaction

Easy to cook my own food for breakfast/lunch

No commute

ON THE ART FRONT: I definitely only did 16 drawings so far of 100, but that’s probably 16 more drawings than I would have made without setting that goal. I also forgot to schedule the first interview with my parents, which I will do shortly after publishing this post. I’ve updated my progress here in case you’re interested. I’ve got a lot to do this weekend!

ON THE FLATULENT FRONT: I woke myself up twice twice in the past week because my farts smelled so bad. Just thought you should know.

ON THE RELIGIOUS THEMES IN MY GOD GIRL SERIES FRONT: I didn’t think about Christian God as ambiguously good/bad in relation to Norse Gods (although really my only knowledge of Norse Gods extends to Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology, which you should definitely LISTEN to because it’s so good and he’s a great reader, and Marvel comics). I really like the ambiguity of morals in Norse Mythology, as told by Neil Gaiman. But I never thought about how Christian God can be like that, too. Depending on what sect you’re in, he could be totally different things. He could be a benevolent and kind God. He could be a wrathful God who breathes punishment. He could be that paternal figure who suggests how you live your life and gives you potential consequences, such as girl you’ll turn into a salt pile if you look back at that fire, or if you do this totally random thing, I’m gonna need you to kill your daughter as a sacrifice to me, your papa pal guy God. It’s still mostly scary to me to create this singular omnipresent dude in the sky that’s always kind of rooting for humanity’s fight against that cool dude with the horns beep beep Richie. Do what you gotta do, believe what you gotta believe to do the right thing, I guess… but what scares me is the inability to do what’s right without a God threatening consequences at you. The lack of critical thought is what scares me, not that people who have some kind of faith in something don’t have the ability to think critically, but I think most people… choose not to think critically when it comes to morals and ethics, etc. Even if they’re super intelligent in other subjects. Not saying I’m a saint either. –God Girl